Billionaire Nike cofounder Phil Knight gives $1 billion to his alma mater: ‘This is no time to abandon’ higher education

Just as the Trump administration has retreated from supporting higher education institutions, billionaire philanthropists have jumped in.

MacKenzie Scott has donated more than $1 billion collectively to HBCUs , and Nike cofounder Phil Knight just made the largest known donation to a public flagship university.

The University of Oregon, where Knight graduated in 1959, announced Wednesday that the Nike cofounder and his wife, Penny, had committed a whopping $1 billion to establish an engineering college there.

The New York Times reported it was an unexpected gift from the Knights, having surfaced from an unscheduled call.

Like other Oregon campus facilities, the new engineering school will be named in honor of the Knights.

The gift brings the couple’s total commitment to the Knight Campus to more than $2 billion, including two earlier $500 million gifts (one in 2016 and one in 2021) to help expand the university’s scientific research complex.

The new gift will allow Oregon, which now offers only engineering minors and graduate programs, to build a full undergraduate engineering program.

Officials told the NYT the process will take about a decade.

Bob Guldberg, a UO vice president and bioengineering professor, told the paper that the program could help ease the state’s shortage of engineers.

“This extraordinary gift is an endorsement of what higher education delivers,” Karl Scholz, president of the University of Oregon, told Fortune .

“It gives us the ability to scale innovation, accelerate impact, and meet the demand for skilled engineering required by the industries of tomorrow, all without placing that financial burden on state taxpayers.” They’ve also made several gifts connected to athletics at Oregon, including $100 million to construct the university’s basketball arena in honor of their late son, Matthew Knight.

Thanks to Knight, Oregon has strong ties to the athletics retailer, with athletes there having access to new and exclusive gear and unique NIL (name, image, and likeness monetization) support.

For those reasons, some people refer to the school as the “University of Nike.” (There’s even a book about it.) The pledge also caps a major philanthropic stretch for the Knights.

Just last week, the couple committed $1.1 billion to Providence St.